(CNN) -- To the people of the Internet who knew his work, he was an "enormous intellect," a "brilliant and determined spirit" and a "hero of the open net." To federal prosecutors, he was a criminal. The suicide of Internet activist Aaron Swartz continued to send shock waves Monday through the hacker community, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the larger online world. Swartz, a digital prodigy who helped develop social-news site Reddit and RSS, the technology that allows websites to send updates to subscribers, was found hanged Friday in his Brooklyn, New York, apartment. His death has inspired a flurry of online tributes and mobilized Anonymous, the loosely defined collective of so-called "hacktivists" who oppose attempts to limit Internet freedoms.

Someone claiming to represent
Anonymous posted a statement online calling the government's prosecution of Swartz "a grotesque miscarriage of justice."